The proposed research is based on the logic that drinking-related insults or impugnments will evoke behavior aimed at restoring one's sense of well-being, and that impugnments which imply that chronic drinking is caused by something about the person that is difficult to modify, like his character, or his having an incurable disease of alcoholism, may lead to unconstructive esteem restoring activity such as denial and more drinking, while impugnments that imply drinking is a specific and modifiable behavior should be more likely to evoke constructive rehabilitative effort. The first phase of the proposed research will examine the effects on the behavior of heavy drinkers of these two kinds of drinking-related messages delivered in a face to face personal manner. The behaviors measured will be subjects' openness to treatment, their view of how much they can benefit from treatment, their tendency to seek drinking information and actual drinking. A secod phase of this research will examine the same logic relative to current educational efforts concerning alcohol abuse that are conducted over television. It is predicted that the two types of impugment (those which imply that drinking has an unmodifiable cause and those which imply that its cause is modifiable) transmitted by radio or television will have similar effects to those obtained by personal impugnment, but that these effects will be emphasized by mode of presentation.